Company Changing Place of Employment

GreeBo

Hey,
my company has decided that we are all going to work from home in the very near future.
For a while there will be a rented office space as people transfer but the end goal is to have everyone working at home.
Does anyone know if they can force us to sign a new contract changing the place of work to our own houses?
I have asked what happens if we dont sign but havent gotten a proper answer yet.
I feel they are trying to get us all to sign without fully explaining what the other options are. Im pretty sure a company cant make the place of employment from say Dublin to Cork without offering people something but we have been made no offer of anything.

Any advice appreciated.

homeOwner

Whats the name of the company and can i get a job there? W
orking from home the holy grail of working IMO.

They can't force you to sign anything but they might let you go if you dont sign. No more than you can force the company to keep your job in one specific location if they are making a move to another premises. What does your contract say about location of work?

I have heard of people being giving a once off payment to move location but that is due to time and money the extra commute places on them. But since in your case the location is home I dont see how they would compensate you other than installing a phone line or broadband to facilitate you working from home.

digitally-yours

Yes Looks like a dream job

If it comes with a nice salary package and some good perks attached to it !:D

GreeBo

Not really as good as it sounds after the first couple of weeks.
Its very isolating and self motivating gets very old, very quickly.

Do you think they would have to offer redundency rather than "fire" you.
If you dont sign you cant really be fired for not doing something that was part of your job/role.

Newaglish

They're not exactly changing your job spec though, just your location of work. Normally you get disturbance money to cover the cost of changing your routine and the cost of commuting further.

In this case though you'll actually be spending less time and money commuting so you haven't a whole lot to complain about. You should be docked wages if anything! (Well OK, not really :P)

I don't really know if you have a case for redundancy though. I certainly don't think you should but it's probably something you could argue, particularly if they wanted you to sign a new contract - that would suggest termination of your original work contract, and as they don't exactly have grounds for dismissal they would have to make you redundant.

How long have you worked there?

GreeBo

No they are not changing the spec but they are certainly changing the terms of employment.
I wouldnt have taken a job if I knew I was going to be working from home.

Seriously, working from home has serious drawbacks as far as I am concerned.
I have been here > 6 years.

Newaglish

Just looking about here and it looks like you would be entitled to redundancy were you to refuse to sign the new work contract, provided you could argue "material deterioration" in the terms and conditions of the contract.

I'd want to be absolutely sure that the change is going ahead before I suggest it though. If they scrap the plan and you still have to work there, they probably wouldn't take too kindly to the whole thing.

On the plus side, you're entitled to 4 weeks notice (or pay in lieu), and 13 weeks pay (subject to a ceiling of €600) if you are made redundant. Funzo

Darragh29

GreeBo wrote:

Hey,
my company has decided that we are all going to work from home in the very near future.
For a while there will be a rented office space as people transfer but the end goal is to have everyone working at home.
Does anyone know if they can force us to sign a new contract changing the place of work to our own houses?
I have asked what happens if we dont sign but havent gotten a proper answer yet.
I feel they are trying to get us all to sign without fully explaining what the other options are. Im pretty sure a company cant make the place of employment from say Dublin to Cork without offering people something but we have been made no offer of anything.

Any advice appreciated.

Don't look a gifthorse in the mouth! Why on earth would you have an issue with this???

DublinWriter

Darragh29 wrote:

Don't look a gifthorse in the mouth! Why on earth would you have an issue with this???

Working at home is much harder than you'd imagine, especially if you have a young family.

leeroybrown

Darragh29 wrote:

Don't look a gifthorse in the mouth! Why on earth would you have an issue with this???

As GreeBo has already pointed out it isn't as good as it sounds. If you do it on a long term basis you'll start to notice a lot of major downsides. Sometimes it can be great when you need some time to attack a project un-interupted but the rest of the time if you would normally work with others in a sociable workplace then being cut off at home can be a pain. That's before you consider the possibility of sharing your workplace with family/housemates/kids.

If you are doing it regularly then you really need to have a dedicated home office that is used for nothing else.

smartypants

to be honest i would hate it, you run the risk of becoming a loner! lol Theres alot to be said for team working and colleagues!

also if i had a young family i could easily see how you could be taken for granted, expected to do everything around the house...do the dinner...pick up the kids... just because your there, at least when your IN work you have an excuse